Green Horses on the Walls

Green Horses on the Walls, the chapbook of performance poems written by the historian Cristina Bejan, is an absorbing book that grapples with and grips key moments of life in honest and direct language. Moving from family memories of crippling fears during totalitarianism in Romania, to the psychology of the diasporic existence marred by confusion and rape, these poems are suffused with an equanimity rare to find in victims of political or sexual abuse. At the heart of these poems is a dreamer, who will rightly and courageously “walk on air, against your better judgement” as the poet Seamus Heaney has written in one of his poems.

Cristina Bejanis a Romanian-American historian, theatre artist and spoken word poet based in Denver, Colorado. She has written eighteen plays, many of which have been produced in the United States, Romania, the United Kingdom and Vanuatu. She is founding executive director of…